Opposition spokesman on health Dr Alfred Dawes has charged that the Government’s response to failures at University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) has been more about managing public perception instead of pursuing meaningful reform.

He also argued that the newly announced panel created to review the auditor general’s findings from a special audit was unnecessary, warning that its creation would only delay accountability.

Dawes argued at a press conference on Thursday that instead of acting decisively on those findings, the Government had opted to create another layer of review, a move, he said, that would allow time to pass without meaningful consequences.

“After every scandal that he has faced, the minister of health has gone on a cross-country tour and gone on every talk show and produced a lot of news to drown out whatever it is that we’re bringing attention to. So now that he has done what he usually does, we are now going to have the press conference that so many are dying for,” Dawes said, while explaining that the Opposition deliberately delayed its press conference to allow the minister’s public engagements to pass before refocusing attention on the issues raised in the audit.

Dawes questioned the purpose of the newly announced panel, arguing that its mandate duplicated work that had already been done and risked delaying action on issues that were well-documented.

“It seems genuine, when you look at it, that we’re seeing the report coming out and then the minister taking decisive action less than 24 hours later. But they knew about the report from last year. Why wasn’t this panel announced last year? Because the panel is only to serve as a distraction for you to wait four months, lose interest, and then you would move on to another scandal somewhere else,” declared Dawes.

He pointed out that the auditor general’s report, which was tabled in Parliament on January 13, had already laid out in detail the governance failures, procurement breaches, and internal control weaknesses at UHWI.

Additionally, he said an internal investigative report commissioned last year November had also flagged many of the same concerns later outlined by the auditor general.

“I found evidence of similar things — a lack of procurement plans, lack of documented controls, repeated internal audit warnings, fragmented governance structures, insufficient staffing, and when it went through department by department to show that the procurement department had staff that were not trained in procurement, there’s a lack of digitisation, and there was no documentation of internal controls. The finance department was weak. The internal audit department, they repeatedly flagged issues but no action taken by management or the audit committee and, of course, they had insufficient staffing and insufficient space to perform their duties,” he said while reading from a copy of the investigative report which he had referenced.

He also questioned why decisive action had not been taken earlier, noting that the auditor general’s findings pointed to years of systemic weaknesses, including the misuse of procurement procedures, inadequate oversight by the board, and the failure to properly document or justify major expenditures.

The audit found, among other things, that UHWI failed to submit approved procurement plans for several years, awarded contracts without adequate documentation, and misused its tax-exempt status to import goods for private companies, resulting in millions of dollars in lost revenue to the State. It also highlighted deficiencies in governance structures and a lack of compliance with public procurement regulations.

Dawes said the scale of the issues raised serious concerns about accountability at the highest levels of the hospital. He further argued that the panel announced by the minister would not address the core problem which, he said, is the failure to act on warnings that had already been raised internally and externally.

“We know where the buck stops and we know who allowed the buck to stop there. So we do have not just the findings, but we have the recommendations. So I don’t know what this new panel is going to add when this investigative committee has already said that we should establish board approved annual strategic procurement plans, we should have digital procurement, we should have immediate training and certification of all procurement staff, increased staffing, and, of course, strengthening the audit committees. It’s all here, there’s no reason to have another panel,” he added.

Dawes also linked the current situation to what he described as prolonged instability in the hospital’s governance, pointing to the disbanding of a previous board that had begun implementing reforms, including efforts to strengthen procurement systems and improve oversight.

He warned that continued delays would have consequences not only for public confidence, but also for patient care and staff morale at what he described as the country’s premier teaching hospital.

“We have to preserve the University Hospital of the West Indies and what has been happening, especially over the last few years, is that the hospital is almost in a death spiral because of poor governance,” he said.